IBA Compliance Connection

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How should customers who use both foreign and English spellings for their name endorse checks? For example, if a customer’s given name is Wiktor, but they also go by “Victor” and they have a check made out to “Victor Smith,” should they endorse the check as “Victor Smith”? Or, should the customer endorse the check as Wiktor Smith, a/k/a Victor Smith?

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We believe your customer may endorse the check as “Victor Smith” or as “Wiktor Smith” — or they may sign both names.

The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) provides that an “instrument is payable to the person intended by the signer even if that person is identified in the instrument by a name or other identification that is not that of the intended person.” For example, the commentary to the UCC provides that if the drawer of a check intends to pay a person known to them as “John Smith,” but the person’s name is actually “James Smith” that person “may indorse the check in either the name John Smith or the person’s correct name or in both names.”

For resources related to our guidance, please see:

  • Illinois UCC, 810 ILCS 5/3-110(a) (“The person to whom an instrument is initially payable is determined by the intent of the person, whether or not authorized, signing as, or in the name or behalf of, the issuer of the instrument. The instrument is payable to the person intended by the signer even if that person is identified in the instrument by a name or other identification that is not that of the intended person. If more than one person signs in the name or behalf of the issuer of an instrument and all the signers do not intend the same person as payee, the instrument is payable to any person intended by one or more of the signers.”)
  • UCC § 3-110 cmt. 1 (“The drawer intends to pay a person known to the drawer as John Smith. In fact that person’s name is James Smith or John Jones or some other entirely different name. If the check identifies the payee as John Smith, it is nevertheless payable to the person intended by the drawer. That person may indorse the check in either the name John Smith or the person’s correct name or in both names. Section 3-204(d).”)